Join.me Updates iOS App: Now Lets You Host Meetings From Your iPad

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Join.me, the online meeting service from LogMeIn, has today launched a notable update to its iOS application which adds the long-awaited functionality to actually host meetings from your iPad. The company had previously released an iOS application in early 2011, but it only allowed users to attend join.me meetings via their iPhone or iPad – not create them.

Despite LogMeIn’s delay to fully embrace the iPad-hosted video conferencing space, join.me has so far proved to be a popular service because of its simple, no registration sign-up process that allows meeting hosts to share their screen almost instantly. Coming from a world of heavy duty, enterprise-level virtual meeting client applications, join.me has been a breath of fresh air for me personally both as a presenter and, more often, as a meeting attendee. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the app’s setup process can be measured in seconds, not minutes. Oh, and the price doesn’t hurt, either – join.me’s basic version is free (which startups seem to love).

The company says that join.me is now LogMeIn’s fastest growing product to date, and it recently passed the 50 million participants mark. And it’s growing still – every month, one million attend or host their first join.me meeting.

With today’s update, join.me users on iOS can now host meetings and share files from their iPad. These files can be saved in the join.me app for later use, or opened and shared on the fly from other apps or from your email. But to be clear, you can’t start sharing your iPad screen itself, so it doesn’t really work as a way to demo an app, for example.

Join.me competes with teleconferencing old-timers like GoToMeeting and Cisco’s WebEx, for example, as well as newer startups like Fuze Box and even consumer-focused services like Skype or Google+ (Hangouts).

The ability to host meetings is only available to join.me’s Pro users ($99/year or $19/month), but anyone can watch meetings on desktop or mobile for free. The updated app is available as a free download here in iTunes.